lifestylesupportguru

Livestock Lessons

A very good day to you all from the Lifestyle Support Guru! It has been a little while since I offered any advice, but this morning I had to visit the vet’s, although I was 24 hours late and I feel that this was meant to be, otherwise I would not have witnessed scenes which taught me a lot in just half an hour.

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Molly

I was late because Molly the Mobster had realised that something was up yesterday when I didn’t have a second cup of coffee because I was taking her for her booster shot and I didn’t have time for a second cup. She shot off and hid under the bed in the spare room and I was unable to reach her – she just sat there purring as if to say, ‘Ha! I’m smarter than you! I know your exact habits!’

Thank goodness the vet doesn’t charge for missed appointments! Therefore, this morning I made sure I had a second coffee, thus fooling her completely. She followed me meekly downstairs, expecting treats, where I was able to pick her up and shove her into her carrier. She then sat there emitting a pathetic miaow from time to time, but I hardened my heart and carried her to the car.

So, where do lessons learned come in to this feline tale? Well, as soon as I got to the vet’s surgery, I realised I was seriously underdressed – there is now clearly a uniform for visiting the vet. It is as follows:

1. Leggings in a bright pattern, preferably with flashes of pink.
2. Pink trainers.
3. A turtle neck jumper, with splashes of pink.
4. A gilet, not necessarily pink, but preferably Barbour.
5. Blonde hair tied up in a loose bun (à la Meghan Markle).
6. A stretchy hairband (with the regulation flash of pink) holding aforementioned blonde hair off the face.
7. A white dog (any size).

I was wearing plain black trousers and a rust-coloured (luckily not rust-covered) jumper, a bobble-covered navy woollen jacket and nice, comfortable ‘granny’ shoes in an understated grey and I had a black cat with me rather than a white dog. I felt this was suitable attire for visiting a place that was going to take money off me – don’t look as if you can afford the exorbitant fees!

And this was where the second lesson came in. While I was studying the visions in pink sharing space in the waiting room, a man came in carrying a dog lead, but with no dog attached – my first assumption was that he had come to collect his pet, but no … he had come to let off steam! He started haranguing the poor receptionist about having to pay extra to his pet insurance company over and above the £800 a year he was already paying. £800!! I felt his pain! Apparently, the insurance company had told him that it was the vet’s fault for taking the dog’s tooth out when he brought him in for a scale and polish. (For a nanosecond I thought maybe I had wandered into the dentist’s by mistake.) Apparently, the insurance company wouldn’t pay for the extraction and were trying to say it was the vet’s fault for taking the tooth out in the first place. The receptionist was very patient and explained that this was the insurance company doing their usual thing of trying to wriggle out of paying for procedures. She then went on to say that they charged less than other vets (try telling that to my bank card!) because they know that the insurance companies will do what they can not to pay for ‘little extras’ (they are probably run by Philip Hammond). The man calmed down and went off, still carrying his empty dog lead and muttering to himself about rip-off insurance companies. And the lesson? If you want to take your anger out on someone, go to a vet’s surgery! (But I’m still wondering why he brought his dog lead with him.)

Molly was then called in to see the vet, who said she had lost weight (Molly, not the vet), but nothing to worry about, all the while looking at me as if to say, ‘Maybe you should follow Molly’s example.’ We then went back into reception where the following animals were called for: Holly (a nervous dog), Polly (a yappy dog) and Poppy (an old, grey dog with a sad face). Lesson 3? It is now clearly a legal requirement to give your pet a two-syllable name ending in ‘y’. I am well within the law.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

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Home Help

A very good afternoon to you all! It is a little while since I offered you any advice, which is very remiss off me because some of you may not be living life as fully as you might without me here to help you avoid any little pitfalls and stumbling blocks along life’s rocky road. Today I wish to discuss domestic problems – not that I have any problems, of course, because I am a living Domestic Goddess, but I have come across a ‘Help’ page in a Sunday paper which answers readers’ questions about household/domestic problems. I felt that the ‘experts’ didn’t necessarily address the problems appropriately, so I felt I should offer alternative solutions. Here are some of the questions that were raised, with a brief version of the experts’ answers (because they did tend to ramble on), followed by my much more succinct and useful answers:
1. My indoor aloe vera has root rot. What can I do?

Expert: Aloe vera dislikes excess moisture or watering. Take your plant out of the pot and remove any soil residue from the roots. Cut any rotten bits with sterilised scissors. Gently tease away any unaffected pups (baby plants growing off the mother plant). Clean, wash and dry the pot. Add a new mix: half soil, half sand. You may add a teaspoon of perlite to absorb excess water. Repot the mother plant in this new soil. Repot any pups with the same half-soil, half-sand mix. Do not water too much.
LSG: Throw it out.

2. I used to have a good relationship with my neighbours, but in the past year they have built an enormous bike shed and a storage shed against our low boundary fence — right under my kitchen window. Then, last week, they built a large bar within a foot of the fence. It’s positioned so that all of their guests can stare into my garden. Is there anything I can do?

Expert: Generally speaking, there is no right in English law to the enjoyment of a view (the expert then rabbits on for ages about tort law, nuisance and a lot more).
LSG: Build a bigger bar that overlooks their bedroom and invite more guests.

3. I recently had the moss removed from my roof. How can I stop it coming back and preserve the tiles?

Expert: Most mosses thrive in moist, shady conditions. Reducing overhanging branches or removing trees to allow sunlight onto the roof will inhibit regrowth. Any work on a roof should be risk-assessed, with appropriate measures taken to prevent falls.
LSG: Get the roof thatched and then the moss will blend in perfectly. Any work on a roof should be risk-assessed – make sure your ladder is long enough.

4. My washing machine stinks.
Expert: Liquid detergent (even biological) used at low temperature does not seem to kill bacteria, which builds up. Washing powders for whites contain bleach, so do a hot white wash (60C) every week. Run a very hot wash with laundry powder once a week. Dry the rubber seal. Use the hottest wash with bio powder. Spray rubber seal with anti-mould or bleach. Keep door open.
LSG: Buy a new washing machine.

5. My wife and I often forget to turn off our bathroom tap. We are 79 and 82. Sometimes we leave the water running for hours. It is a single mixer tap: to turn it on, we lift the handle up, but we forget to push it back down. Is there a device that can remind us?

Expert: The best suggestion I can make is to fit a self-closing “non-concussive” tap, which you press to turn on — the sort you often get in motorway services. They only run for a few seconds unless you hold them down. My only concern is that, as you get older, a push-button tap may be more difficult for your hands to manage. If you can use it, however, it would certainly solve the problem.
LSG: My only concern is that neither of you can cope with remembering to push a tap handle down when you must be able to see/hear the water running, but more especially when your water bill arrives. Book yourselves into the nearest residential care home while they still have double rooms available.

First world problems, eh?

Another Film Review

A very good evening to you all! The Lifestyle Support Guru here with another insightful and incisive film review. The film, a French one, was suggested by Mrs Marzipan (who featured heavily in my last post). She was accompanied by her husband, Mr Lederhosen (who also featured briefly in the same post and who, for once, had not managed to come up quickly enough with a DIY project to get out of the afternoon’s entertainment).
The film was called ‘Les Gardiennes’ and had been positively reviewed in some newspaper or other, although Mrs Marzipan couldn’t remember which one – I have a feeling it may have been ‘Farmers’ Weekly’.
The film was about how the women in France coped while their men were fighting in the Great War and, since I enjoy films about the two World Wars, I thought this would be an interesting ‘take’. Well, for the first hour, I thought we’d accidentally bought tickets for a screening of ‘Countryfile’ which had been filmed in an agricultural museum. We had long scenes of women haymaking, while the older men of the village stood around drinking homemade wine; every so often, a younger male member of the main family would turn up on leave from the front, give a little help in the fields, have a nightmare or two about the hostilities, then gaze into the distance for a while (as they always do in French films) before going back to fight.
A young woman, Francine, an orphan, joined the cast to help on the farm and, of course, fell in love with Georges, one of the sons of Hortense, the matriarch of the family. The tempo was upped a bit by now because Hortense, after falling over as she was guiding the plough (too much homemade wine, I suspect), decided to mechanise the haymaking and we were treated to a ten-minute scene of how this machine worked – fascinating! I was waiting for Hortense to get swept into the machine, but no such luck. Given that there was a war on, how did they manage to get the money? By selling homemade wine to some dastardly American soldiers who had not yet been sent to the front.
I’m not sure you want much more detail – a tractor featured, and we were treated to five minutes of that being driven around the farmyard – and Hortense didn’t get run over, sadly.
Meanwhile, Francine has been getting more involved with Georges – they go off on a picnic and ‘cement’ their relationship, so to speak. I was most disappointed because they didn’t touch their picnic at all, leaving the baguette sticking up out of the wicker basket to go stale. 😊

However, things were not meant to run smoothly – as Georges was being driven to the station by his mother to go back to the front, they pass Francine selling some wine to one of the dastardly Americans who is trying to kiss her – of course, Georges gets completely the wrong end of the stick (or baguette?) and Hortense encourages him in his mistake. Briefly, Francine gets the push and, of course, she finds out she’s pregnant but, although she writes to Hortense to tell her this, Hortense throws her letter on the fire.
As the film was going on, the year would be shown briefly when action changed and I (naively, as it turned out) assumed it would finish in 1918. It was when 1920 flashed up that I whispered to Mrs Marzipan and Mr Lederhosen, ‘I just hope this isn’t going to continue into the 21st century – we’ll be here all night.’
All ends happily – sort of (this is a French film, after all!). Francine, who has come into some money, is leading a happy life as a singer, and Georges turns up where she’s singing, and he looks thoroughly miserable. Hah!

We felt in need of some refreshment after all this agricultural misery, so we repaired to the bar for some wine. With eyes bigger than our thirsts, we ended up not finishing a bottle of wine and Mrs Marzipan and Mr Lederhosen insisting that I take the unfinished bottle home with me. Picture me getting on the bus home with a half-finished bottle of wine sticking up out of my handbag. Luckily, no neighbours were on the bus, so I think I got away with it!
Enjoy the rest of your evening! 🍷📽️🚜🥖👩‍🌾

Vegetables, Anyone?

Good evening, faithful followers and beloved believers. Tonight, a tale with a moral.

I had a most excellent lunch today with a couple of good friends, marred only by the lack of awareness of one of the party of how many vegetables should be taken from the dishes placed in the middle of the table. I shall refer to the friends as Mr and Mrs Marzipan, to spare their blushes (the name comes from the fact that are both members of a quiz team called ‘Marzipan’), although they aren’t married. Actually, they ARE married, just not to each other; but, before you sit in judgement on them, I hasten to add that they are happily married to other people who hadn’t come to the lunch – one was working and the other was trying on some lederhosen (but more of that later).

We were a jolly trio, chatting gaily about anything and everything. We ordered our food and continued chatting and, when the main course arrived, the plates were placed in front of us, with the vegetables in separate dishes in the middle (although the LSG had a salad – not for any reason of feeling virtuous but because I didn’t feel that French fries or potatoes and vegetables would go with risotto). I tucked into my risotto with gusto (a bit like pesto, but nicer) when, suddenly, Mrs Marzipan said to Mr Marzipan, ‘Do you especially like carrots?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, heaping the rest of the carrots onto his plate as well as dropping one or two on the table.
Mr M then realised there was a point to this question and looked up. ‘Ah,’ he said with dawning comprehension, looking at the vegetable dishes (now denuded of carrots) in the middle, ‘they’re meant to be between us, aren’t they?’
‘Yes,’ replied Mrs M. ‘but that’s ok.’
‘No, no,’ he said anxiously, ‘have some of these off my plate – and there’s a couple that have fallen on the table. Will they do? And what about some extra broccoli? And you can have all the potatoes if you want!’ (I clung on to my risotto for dear life, I can tell you, in case he started on that as well!)
By this time Mrs M and I were in hysterics, wiping our eyes at the stricken look on Mr M’s face – even the stern-looking lady at a table across from us couldn’t help smiling as we squealed with laughter! What larks, what japes!

And the lederhosen? That was Mrs Marzipan’s husband, who waved to Mr Marzipan through the kitchen window when he came to collect Mrs M for lunch.
‘Why is your husband wearing lederhosen?’ asked Mr M as Mrs M got in the car.
‘Lederhosen?’
‘Yes, I could see the straps across his chest through the window.’
‘They weren’t lederhosen straps – that was the harness for his saxophone which he’d been practising before you arrived.’ When I heard this story, picturing Mrs M’s tall husband in lederhosen, it sent me into gales of laughter, once more bringing a smile to the stern-looking woman’s face! At least she left the restaurant happier than when she came in!

And the moral? Get stuck into the vegetables before anyone else does! Enjoy your weekend, whatever you may be wearing! (I couldn’t find a lederhosen emoji, so you’ll have to make do with a carrot, some broccoli and a laughing face!)

The Cost Of Being Single

A very good evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru.

I decided to write this after reading an article in that esteemed, if just the teensiest bit left-wing, newspaper, The Grauniad (not to be confused with its sister paper, The Guardian), about the TRUE cost of being single.

‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘someone else who has wondered why M&S doesn’t do a ‘Dine in for One for £5 with free bottle of wine’, instead of assuming that everyone has someone with whom they wish to share their Gastropub Fish Pie or Gastropub Steak Lasagne with a side of Wild Rocket (that’s a SIDE dish?? That’s just a few pieces of grass which stick in your teeth and tickle your throat, making you cough and choke!)

He Doesn’t Like Vegetables!

In fact, come to think of it, there are probably people who are NOT single who would not wish to share their Gastropub Fish Pie or Gastropub Steak Lasagne, but they are called ‘greedy’ (and they’d probably go for the side dish of Chunky Chips rather than the Wild Rocket, and the other person in their life wouldn’t even get a look in at the Profiterole Stack).

But I digress. How disappointed I was when I read the article in full and found that it was just a whiney piece by some woman who was bemoaning the fact that she hadn’t found her rock, her soulmate, her ‘yang’ to her ‘yin’, her Andy Pandy to her Looby Loo, her Simon to her Garfunkel, her Thelma to her Louise (I’m being fully inclusive here), and how the government is bleeding her dry because of that. She came up with one or two interesting facts, I have to say – there are more unmarried women alive today than at any point in history, apparently, although I’m not sure if this will still be the same tomorrow or the day after…

However, on the plus side, I find I’ve saved money because she says, on average, women spend £1,280 a year on dates. The obvious answer is – just don’t go on dates, you stupid woman!
Hah! Bet some of you thought I was going to make some obvious, sexist remark about how women shouldn’t pay on dates anyway – believe me, I learned my lesson on that a long time ago in Redditch (where I was working at the time) when my date paid for the meal but said I could choose the wine since I spoke French (logic?) then said he only drank Liebfraumilch (not my favourite tipple, as Beloved Believers will know). Not only that, when he drove me back to my flat and I politely asked him if he wanted a coffee – hoping he’d say no – he produced a LITRE bottle of Liebfraumilch from the back seat and said we could drink that instead. He got coffee.

To compound matters, as he was leaving shortly after (I made him drink his coffee very quickly), he gave me a goodnight kiss and said I was a very sweet person. SWEET? SWEET?? SWEET??? The LSG may be many things – all-seeing, all-knowing, all over the place, but SWEET??? Reader, I did not marry him…

But I have strayed from the subject again. There are times when I feel aggrieved because I have to pay a supplement for being single (hotels, holidays, that sort of thing) but they have not yet started charging a premium on single women drinking wine, and that is something for which I am eternally grateful… unless someone from the government reads this and thinks, ‘What a jolly wheeze! Let’s start a new tax for all those people drinking on their own, even if they’re happy doing that. In fact, let’s tax them even more simply because they’re happy being on their own!’ They’d make a fortune from at least three people in my family!
Have a good weekend, dear LSG followers. I shall spend it avoiding anywhere and anyone that offers me a glass of Liebfraumilch…
… and paying for my own meal.

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